Getting the Facts about Petraeus and Benghazi

At the moment the nation needs answers, top officials aren't testifying.

The stunning resignation of CIA Director David Petraeus, days before he was to testify on the CIA role in the Benghazi massacre, raises many more questions than his resignation letter answers.

“I showed extremely poor judgment by engaging in an extramarital affair,” wrote Petraeus. ” Such behavior is unacceptable … as the leader of an organization such as ours.”

The problem: Petraeus’ “unacceptable behavior,” adultery with a married mother of two, Paula Broadwell, that exposed the famous general to blackmail, began soon after he became director in 2011.

Was his security detail at the CIA and were his closest associates oblivious to the fact that the director was a ripe target for blackmail, since any revelation of the affair could destroy his career?

People at the CIA had to know they had a security risk at the top of their agency. Did no one at the CIA do anything?

By early summer, however, Jill Kelley, 37, a close friend of the general from his days as head of CentCom at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla., had received half a dozen anonymous, jealous, threatening emails.

“Back off.” “Stay away from my guy!” they said.

Kelley went to an FBI friend who ferreted out Broadwell as the sender and Petraeus as the guy she wanted Kelley to stay away from.

Yet, learning that Broadwell was the source of the emails, that Petraeus was having an affair with her, and that the CIA director was thus a target for blackmail and a security risk should have taken three days for the FBI, not three months.

And when Broadwell was identified as the source of the threats, did the Tampa FBI office decide on its own to rummage through her other emails? And when Petraeus’ secret email address popped up, did the local FBI decide to rummage through his emails, as well?

Was the CIA aware that Petraeus’ private emails were being read by the FBI?

Surely, as soon as Petraeus’ affair became known, FBI Director Robert Mueller would have been told and would have alerted Attorney General Eric Holder, who would have alerted the president.

For a matter of such gravity, this is normal procedure. Yet, The New York Times says the FBI and the Justice Department kept the White House in the dark.

Is that believable?

Could it be that Obama and the National Security Council were kept ignorant of a grave security risk and a potentially explosive scandal that the Tampa FBI field office knew all about?

By late October, with the FBI, Justice and the White House all in “hear-no-evil” mode, an FBI “whistle-blower” from Florida contacted the Republican leadership in the House and told them of the dynamite the administration was sitting on.

Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s office called Mueller, and the game was up. But the truth was withheld until after Nov. 6.

On Thursday, closed Senate hearings are being held into unanswered questions about the terrorist attack in which Amb. Chris Stevens, two former Navy SEALs and a U.S. diplomat were killed.

There are four basic questions.

Why were repeated warnings from Benghazi about terrorist activity in the area ignored and more security not provided, despite urgent pleas from Stevens and others at the consulate?

Why was the U.S. military unable to come to the rescue of our people begging for help, when the battle in Benghazi lasted on and off for seven hours?

Who, if anyone, gave an order for forces to “stand down” and not go to the rescue of the consulate compound or the safe house? A week before Petraeus’ resignation, the CIA issued a flat denial that any order to stand down ever came from anyone in the agency.

Fourth, when the CIA knew it was a terrorist attack, why did Jay Carney on Sept. 13, David Petraeus to Congress on Sept. 14, UN Amb. Susan Rice on Sept 16 on five TV shows, and Obama before the UN two weeks after 9/11 all keep pushing what the CIA knew was a false and phony story: That it had all come out of a spontaneous protest of an anti-Islamic video made by some clown in California?

There was no protest. Was the video-protest line a cover story to conceal a horrible lapse of security before the attack and a failure to respond during the attack — resulting in the slaughter?

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has sent word she will not be testifying. And she will soon be stepping down. Petraeus is a no-show this week. He is gone. Holder is moving on, and so, too, is Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.

President Nixon’s Attorneys General John Mitchell and Richard Kleindienst and his top aides Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman were all subpoenaed by the Watergate Committee and made to testify under oath about a bungled bugging at the DNC.

The Benghazi massacre is a far graver matter, and the country deserves answers. The country deserves the truth.

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12 Responses to Getting the Facts about Petraeus and Benghazi

According to reports, Petraeus will still likely be hauled in to testify; he just won’t be doing it in the role of DCI. Thursday’s hearing is for testimony of DCI, not of a particular individual, so Petraeus won’t be there, but he’ll get his turn.

President Nixon’s Attorneys General John Mitchell and Richard Kleindienst and his top aides Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman were all subpoenaed by the Watergate Committee and made to testify under oath about a bungled bugging at the DNC.

The Benghazi massacre is a far graver matter, and the country deserves answers. The country deserves the truth.

That’s a point that deserves a lot more attention than this bald, undeveloped, and unsupported statement, don’t you think?

Why were repeated warnings from Benghazi about terrorist activity in the area….?

Because, if it turns out the ex-SEALs were part of a covert CIA operation, the warnings were not “ignored” so much as they were noted; but it was determined that operational security was more important.

Why was the U.S. military unable to come to the rescue of our people begging for help, when the battle in Benghazi lasted on and off for seven hours?

Again, if this was a CIA operation and not a simply a case of a U.S. consulate being attacked by terrorists; it is not likely the CIA would even acknowledge the operation. I believe the WSJ recently reported that as many as a dozen (including ex-SEALs Woods and Doherty) in Benghazi were CIA employees/contractors; and not State Department diplomats. I am not privy to chain-of-command or inter-agency protocol, but it seems silly to think the CIA would ask the DoD to “rescue” undercover operatives.

Who, if anyone, gave an order for forces to “stand down” and not go to the rescue of the consulate compound or the safe house?

have we confirmed there was a “stand down” order? and again, see question/answer #2. it is possible the CIA (and perhaps even the State Department) did not want to acknowledge the operation.

Fourth, when the CIA knew it was a terrorist attack, why did Jay Carney on Sept. 13, David Petraeus to Congress on Sept. 14, UN Amb. Susan Rice on Sept 16 on five TV shows, and Obama before the UN two weeks after 9/11 all keep pushing what the CIA knew was a false and phony story: That it had all come out of a spontaneous protest of an anti-Islamic video made by some clown in California?

one more time; it is possible that Carney, Rice, Petreaus, et al were not all on the same page (different security clearance levels, different “need to know” levels). sometimes (covert intelligence operations) there are “cover stories” presented to confuse or deceive the target of the opertation (aka – our enemies). sometimes the press is used to present this disinformation.

as I have noted in other posts in other blogs; if you want to make political hay out of the the actual operation (whatever it was), or the wisdom of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East; have at it, but to speculate about the nefarious nature of a covert operation (or the fact that aspects of the operation have been “covered -up” is childish. c’mon Pat, you’re a longtime DC insider; you’re better than that.

Certainly, it is no surprise that the Obama administration recognized the imprudence of making this information public just before the election. The mainstream media cooperated by providing as little reportage as possible of the Benghazi incident during that time.

The American people placed their trust in these “leaders” for another 4 years. I hope they will be happy with the result, although right now the prospects don’t look good.

Rossbach, Yes, and I guess Eric Cantor is part of that liberal cover-up as well. As we all know he is a big Obama supporter and certainly wouldn’t have wanted to do anything to jeopardize Obama’s reelection.

Good grief. Step out of the bubble people. Sometimes things are exactly as they appear – whether it be a CIA covert ops screw-up, or a guy with a big ego getting caught “dipping his wick”. Not everything needs to be viewed as some sort of political cover-up. Then again, the whole “fill in the blank”-gate syndrome will certainly raise ad revenues for the various infotainment (err news) outlets.

Let us not forget the Israel connection. Why did the FBI call congressman Eric Cantor? Remember, the General in his testimony before congress criticized Israel. Later he tried to retract but AIPAC and the neocons don’t easily forgive. What better way to derail General’s candidacy in 2016.

The key to the Benghazi attack and the key to the cover-up actions surrounding it lay in why these people were in this town that does not contain a US Embassy, and was home to a force of contractor ex-SEALS and to which the ambassador seems to have almost no reason to be, either from a proximity to the US Embassy on the other side of the country, or considering that the city is run by a variety of Islamist militias not under the actual control of any central govt.

Broadwell seems to confirm that actions at these facilities were outside of what is approved CIA operations. It is not likely that she made this up out of thin air.

MY GUESS=
After agitating to drag us into Libya’s civil war, The Neocon Repubs and Neolib Dems created a potential disaster as thousands of formerly Quadaffi-owned SAM’s that threaten civil aviation in the hands of terrorists, fell into the hands of militias that in many cases had been Jihadis against american troops in Iraq/Afghanistan.

Obama had with great fanfare (and with good reason) forbidden publicly any black-sites, abductions for transport to black sites, waterboarding…etc.. when he came to power.

The focus of the annex in Benghazi was to round up these SAM’s and get intel on who had them and where. The annex personnel and ex-SEAL contractors being used in this regard along with the not-so-well-connected-as-he-thought Stevens were limited in their ability to effect this mission because a SEAL may be a great combat effective within a force in a firefight but a midwestern-origin SEAL who cant speak arabic, cannot move among locals, and who is not a trained or experienced investigator, is a poor choice to undertake such a mission that is far outside his ability or training.

As in Iraq, they became reliant on interrogations using local hires, who they brought in (kidnapped) suspects to be interrogated at the Benghazi annex, and this was likely approved behind the scenes by at least some authority in D.C., despite the fact such actions had publicly been made illegal.

When word got out of such activities, and someones’ cousins/father/comrades got taken to the annex who had some actual information that threatened the local Jihadis’ if it was divulged, they attacked to secure their personnel or failing that to abduct the ambassador to use as a exchange hostage.

No one is telling the truth about this event or discussing why these people were posted in a city run by warlords because they were engaged in capture/interrogation activities that are either Illegal under US law, against Obama Admin proclaimed policy, and tactic approval to use these tactics had been authorized at very high levels of govt, which correctly feared the use of Quadaffi’s pilfered SAM supply stocks.
Even the most Neocon of Repubs wont delve into this in public or in their media, and instead wish to exclusively focus on post-attack response to harm Obama, since to once again disclose that we are roaming around wartorn cities kidnapping people and using various methods to obtain info from them is something the Neocon Repubs approve of, want to continue, and dont want brought to public attention.

BATB,
Many thanks for connecting these dots. I had been wondering why an ambassador, whose job normally is attending state functions in the capitol, would be out in the boondocks on the other side of the country. Making nice with the disaffected, which was the official line on why he was in Benghazi seemed like something an assistant would do. Which leads to the question, was he part of the black op – after all, Obama’s hit list is an executive branch effort and State is part of that branch – or , as you suggest, was he duped into lending his standing to the spooks, the better to rope in suspects?